


Halcyon Years

by Falalalafell



Category: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: In the sense that Zelda is not Zelda, King Rhoam Critical, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Insert, Worldbuilding, Zelda-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falalalafell/pseuds/Falalalafell
Summary: If I've been put here to play Zelda by the game or the goddesses or whatever, then I'll be doing it my way.I'm gonna take down a monarchy and spoil Link absolutelyrotten.
Relationships: King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule & Zelda, Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	1. Press Start

“Father, no! Please don’t take it away!”

I pull at his robes with both my hands, desperately begging him to stop, to listen, to _look_ at me once more in the way he hasn’t since Mother died. Yet Father walks forward, slowly but with not even the slightest hesitation. 

“The return of the Calamity has been foretold,” he tells me, as if I was not there when the fortune teller spoke. As if I have not been living under the weight of those words to this very day. “As the princess of Hyrule, your sole focus must be on your training. A toy such as this is merely a distraction.”

 _Terrako is not a toy!_ I want to shout. _It is my precious friend! It is the one I entrust all my secrets to! It is the only thing I have left of Mother since she died and took your love with her!_ But all that comes out of my mouth is more hiccuping sobs of _please, please…!_

Father finally looks at me. He looks sad. I can’t stop crying, no breath to shape words, so I stare back and pray to the Goddess that he can understand me, understand my feelings, understand how much Terrako means to me-

He turns away.

“I’m sorry.”

My trembling, clumsy fingers slip from his robe as my legs give out beneath me. Father walks on, Terrako under his arm like something cumbersome and unneeded. Tears blot out my vision as I drop my head and open my mouth and

_s_ C _**R**_ _e_ _A_ **m** _**.**_

My hands become fists and pound at the floor hard enough to feel the stone below the carpet. It hurts, but I don’t give a damn. Everything hurts. Everything hurts, my eyes, my throat, my skull, my heart, my _teethspinefingerslungseverythingeverything_ everything hurts. Someone lifts me off the ground and they’re made of metal so I slam my face against them, one two three four but before the pain can overwhelm the pain my hair is held tight to keep my head still. We are moving, and I am moving, hurting and lashing out but my feet and wrists only barely keep smacking more metal until I am no longer touching metal at all. Under me is something soft that smells soothing, the only balm I’ll ever accept so I bury myself into it and keep screaming because even with that happiness I am in pain. A hand is on my back, briefly, or not, until it too is taken away like everything else.

Like everything else.

The world goes bright and dark and bright again before the pain brands itself into two burning questions across my mind’s eye:

What am I doing here, and why am I so distraught over this?


	2. Ionone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my friend _complaining_at_the_void_ for being my sassy, priority-seeking beta. 
> 
> Go read her work it's good.

The bed smells of violets.

It’s the only thing connecting my current thread of sanity, I think. The smell of violets. My mom loves the scent, wears it all the time as perfume. Has our apartment filled with candles scented like them and the flowers themselves growing in the window. I asked her why she didn’t name me Violet, once, when she loves them so much. She just laughed and said it wasn’t my name.

Violet is not my name.

Zelda, too, is not my name.

I turn in this bed, soft, monstrously large, and not mine, to stare once more at the image in the mirror that isn’t mine. The hay-blonde hair, not mine. The green eyes, not mine. The frame of a child, not mine. Not me. Yet it blinks when I blink and breathes as I breathe and moves how I move so I think it’s me now.

The bed smells of violets.

I turn away from the mirror, again, to look into the sun glaring through the window. I can’t actually see anything but sky, at this angle. Sky and a few birds. Or are those Rito? I wonder how hard it is to tell the two apart at a distance.

Violets.

Okay.

I’m playing Zelda now, I guess. Age of Calamity flavor, if what I came into was any sort of indication. Or maybe I’m technically playing the Breath of the Wild Zelda? Who is the same Zelda but in a different timeline? That will be an important distinction at some point, I’m sure. But it’s the same girl until that point so whatever.

I don’t know how I got here. I was at home. It was New Years, and I had stayed up just long enough for the date to turn before I went to bed. Then I woke up as a crying child.

Crying is probably the simplest way to describe that experience.

The bed smells of violets.

So. Zelda. For now. Forever? Hard to say. I’ve read plenty of books and fanfiction and manga regarding isekai but I’ve certainly never lived one. I sure as hell don’t _want_ it to be forever. I want to go back to my home. My mom. My life. My body, in particular, would be nice. Why couldn’t it be THAT kind of isekai?

I blame Nintendo. Them and their stupid game where you can’t pet dogs.

Wait.

I can pet the dogs now.

Hmm.

Not now. But it will happen.

Zelda. Considering what I just played through, she must be about seven years old now. Ten years before the start of Age of Calamity, give or take, and...another hundred and change to that if it’s Breath of the Wild. So ten years overall until shit hits the fan.

Ten years until I meet Link.

There’s a knock on the door. My breath catches in my throat, and doesn’t let itself out to answer the voice that follows. “Your Highness? Are you awake?”

It’s not very long before the door creaks open even without a response. “Oh, she’s asleep.”

“You can’t just go inside!” A second voice hisses. I recognize it as Tern, and the first Nicol. No, Zelda recognizes it? I don’t have any memory of them exactly but I know who they are. Two of her three personal maids. Is this an isekai cheat? Wisdom Goddess goddess wisdom? Just Zelda’s memory? Whatever. It’s handy and nice to know I won’t have to fake amnesia or anything.

Nicol and Tern had kept up the whispered argument as I turned the thoughts over in my head, and I tune back in when I hear the clink of ceramic on wood. Is that food? Please be food. I would love to stuff my face and forget my troubles right now.

“Poor princess. I can’t believe the king didn’t visit her even once all this time.” Nicol, clearly the bolder of the two, says this from right behind me as I suddenly find the blankets being pulled up to my shoulder. I snap my eyes shut. “She just lost her mother, and now her favorite doo-dad. Isn’t that just cruel?”

“His Majesty surely has his reasons,” Tern argued from farther away. Was it the distance or lack of conviction making her sound weaker? “Now come along, you’ve already delivered the meal.”

“Alright, alright.”

They leave, and the door clicks shut, and I wait as long as I’m able before I turn back around and jump on the food.

Being a princess clearly has perks and those perks are called _professional chefs._

Pro-chef-ionals?

Anyway.

Good food helps settle my stomach as much as it settles my nerves. I lie on my back and stare up at the stone ceiling. Dreary. Zelda should really paint that. I should really paint that? What should I do, really?

There were two obvious paths before me; I do my best to play the Zelda from the games and hope by the end of the plot I’ve fulfilled whatever reason I was sent here for and get to go home, or I break the game and do what I want while looking for a way back myself. The first one...doesn’t sound appealing at all. I’m not Zelda. I’m playing as her, but I’m not her. There are so many different decisions I would make, not just from knowing but from being me. And who brings someone into another world just to have them make the same choices as the one they replaced? What would the point of that even be?

So option two. I change things. Do it my way. Pet dogs. Maybe save the world while I’m at it.

Well. 

I can do one of those at least.


End file.
